CAMPAIGN 2012

Analysis: What the Big 1960s Debate in Anthropology Can Tell Us About Mitt Romney

By Nancy Scola, The Atlantic

Nicholas Lemann's new New Yorker profile of Mitt Romney is the portrait of a man for whom life is a series of outcome maximizations:

George Romney was an organization man. Mitt Romney became a transaction man: someone who moves assets around with a speed and force that leaves many of the rest of us bewildered. The insurrection in business has profoundly affected the lives of most people who work, pay taxes, and get government benefits. It's the backdrop of this Presidential election.

And, as Lemann fleshes out Romney, this isn't just about Bain, and it's not just about capital. It's about the Salt Lake City Olympics, the Massachusetts governorship, his work as an elder in the Mormon church. Lehmann quotes one of the people Romney hired to run his gubernatorial bid: "If he's elected, he'll do an adequate job of dealing with the issues of the day. He's not a vision guy. He's not policy-driven. He thinks he'll do a good job." Process is where Mitt Romney puts his faith, and he's a man who holds up his end of transactions. That means political power should be flowing his way.

Latest Politics Posts:Loading feed...

Of course, there's a very good chance that 2012 won't end up that way. And Lemann's framing of the issue hints, albeit in a distant way, at why it might not.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Romney "transaction man" quip echoes the fiery debate over transactionalism kicked off by the 1959 monograph Political Leadership among Swat Pathans by Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth. Anthropology had for decades been dominated by structural functionalism's focus on society's forms and norms. Barth instead focused on the role of the individual's rational self-interest in northern Pakistan's Swat Valley.

The sprawling academic debate that ensued is detailed here, but a sketch of it gives a different perspective on why people might be having trouble relating to Romney, and Romney to people.

Transaction, stated Barth, is "the process which results where the parties in the course of their interactions systematically try to assure that the value gained for them is greater or equal to the value lost." Reflecting back on his work later, Barth explained that "not all social relations are constructed in this way, but many certainly are." Not for nothing was transactionalism also known as "methodological individualism."

Transactionalism has implications for leadership. In places where there's free choice, at least, there's no real reason to stick to your group. The Pathans were more tied to their khan, or caste leader, than one another. "Many of the politically active individuals in Swat clearly recognize the distinction between private and group advantage," wrote Barth, "and when faced with a choice they tend to consider the former rather than the latter."

Boiled down, authority "is built up and maintained through the exercise of a continual series of individual choices." A leader, in other words, has to constantly display his worthiness. From there easily flows the idea that, because everything's a free transaction, power ends up where it belongs.

Moreover, transactionalism suggests that societies are the most stable and harmonious when groups don't compete to make their livings, instead occupying their own economic niches. It's a construction that sheds light on why Romney's comfortable taking about the poor and middle class as "them." There's nothing wrong with them, necessarily; they're just doing their own thing.

A History of Anthropological Theory explains further: "Social relationships are 'generated,' sustained, and changed as a result of the economic choices made by individuals, each of whom has learned to play and manipulate the 'rules' of a social 'game.' " It also helps explain Romney's disdain for the 47 percent of Americans who, in his flawed thinking, refuse to play the game. He literally has no way to understand them.